hold me ♡ minsung

39. hyung (part 1)

♡

FEBRUARY 11

   He had to know.

   Three days and nights of wondering 'why, why, why can't I remember?' had rendered Minho restless, almost more so than the endlessly replaying, haunting memory of Hyunjin's shocked face and stuttery words from the other night.

    It was torture, and on his own Minho could find no way out. He wasn't getting anywhere, either in his attempts to figure out a better way to try and fix himself or to reach back in his memory and find the place where things went south. ...And he felt like something had to be done, sooner rather than later, because he had a feeling that unpleasant things would start happening if he waited— like Hyunjin finally spilling the secret (which he evidently had not done yet, since Minho wasn't getting stared at or anything when he was with the other boys) or Jisung checking up on him as always, which would probably be as uncomfortable as ever... there was also the fact that he knew by now that he was bound to start deteriorating and getting desperate and unpredictable again, like a ticking time bomb.

    So now was the time to act. And today, Minho was in a strange mood, where he felt like he had to do something drastic.

   The truth was that no one else knew what went on inside his mind. Even Jisung, with what he had unfortunately witnessed thus far, could not understand the intensity of the endless crashing waves of his conscience, though he seemed to sense a portion of how much they weighed on Minho.

   For the past three days, (and this evening especially), Minho had been mulling over Jisung's words from the other night.

'Maybe you should try talking to Chan hyung about this...'

   ...When it finally occurred to Jisung that Minho just might be seriously messed up (rather than just gloomy and reserved), it seemed, his first thought was to send him off to Chan to be fixed. That was upsetting in multiple ways. At first, the idea of willingly explaining what was going on with him was so repulsive to an already-agitated, nauseated Minho that it made him puke, but... maybe Jisung had a point.

   Had circumstances been different (as in, if Chan weren't always so busy and run down and preoccupied), Minho might have ended up coming to him instead of Jisung on those nights when he got desperate.

   For the most part, Chan tended to be very mellow and had a way of mellowing everything around him (it even worked on Minho to some extent). Like Jisung said, he had a way with words, and he was evidently quite perceptive. 

   He was like Jisung, but chill. A busier, more tired version of Jisung that probably didn't have the time or energy to get seriously and passionately involved with Minho the way that Jisung had... that was why it felt like Minho just might be able to talk to him. Because even if Minho allowed him to see a small portion of the things he was dealing with, Chan wouldn't be constantly prodding at Minho the way Jisung did afterwards. 

(And he didn't seem to be quite as... touchy-feely— or emotional— as Jisung, and that showed a lot in the way that each of them spoke, so Minho found himself being less uncomfortable while listening to Chan most of the time.)

   After sitting in his room alone for hours considering it, Minho had finally talked himself into it/psyched himself up enough to finally do it. Probably. Once again, his mind was split into two: one half telling him that it didn't matter that he wasn't getting anywhere in his endeavors, he should absolutely not be blabbering to anyone about his problems, because that was weak and pathetic; one half telling him that it was the brave thing to do because he was incredibly afraid of doing it (despite the fact that he felt a vague but powerful satisfaction when he considered that he was truly afraid of it)  In the end, the latter won out. He'd been through these sorts of situations many times before, and until recently it was always the former that he listened to.